"When the Lord made me...."

As I walk the streets of London at the moment, one sound is pervasive - more common than any other I hear. It is the sound of breath swiftly sucked back through the teeth, instinctively, against the cold.

There is an arctic cold snap at the moment I'm afraid, timed perfectly to coincide with my return from warmer climes over Christmas. It is testing my usually intractable sense of humour as well as the circulation in my toes, as I shuffle from the flat to the tube, from the tube to work, and back.

London itself has been a little cold for a while. The temperature is always unreliable of course, but the mood too has cooled. The credit crunch has sucked the heat from the global economy, and with it a lot of the optimism and zing that normally pulses through the veins of this place. As the last leaves were clinging to the branches of the trees a couple of months ago, sizable portions of the expat community here decided not to cling any longer. I'm hoping their decision was premature, but with the daily headlines rather depressing, the temperatures sub-zero and feeling a little beset by homesickness, one can't help but wonder.

I've been listening to a great album in the past week - Jukebox by Cat Power. The second track is a brilliant cover of Rambling Man by Hank Williams. Except she sings it as Rambling Woman. Which is quite a fitting track to hum while I tell you my resolutions for 2009.

This is the year of no excuses. No more rambling. Focus. That's the overriding theme of the resolutions. Generally speaking they aren't well thought through, not like last years 'self-improvement' resolutions. (And for the record, I did them all, and my meat and potato pie is awesome). But the thrust of the whole thing is, get back to basics and do what I love and am most interested in. That means scholarly, nerdy stuff and lots of reading, and lots more writing. I am also going to learn a new language.

I'd realised that for some weird reason, I'd always made excuses not to learn French. No longer. I enrolled in a morning class today. Schlepping across London for an 8am Thursday class, all in the name of a new years resolution. Awesome.

Anyway, with that vagary disposed of, I might hit the hay. I hope 2009 finds you, dear reader, (if indeed you still exist) safe and well. 'When the Lord made me, he made a rambling woman.'